Thursday, May 17, 2012

Johnny Carson and Late Night TV Today

To mark
the 20th anniversary of his retirement from “The Tonight Show,” PBS’s
“American Masters” series aired a fine documentary on Johnny Carson earlier this
week. This special reminds us again of
the decline of mass culture, as Carson’s “Tonight Show” was the last late-night
program that most Americans watched.
Over the last decade, a plethora of shows have emerged on both the cable
and broadcast networks that appeal to particular audience niches.

From
1963-1992, Carson was virtually the only game in town on late night television,
dominating the ratings for his entire stint.
Over the years, numerous challengers tried to displace him, including
Dick Cavett, Alan Thicke, and Pat Sajak.
His only real rival throughout most of this time was Ted Koppel’s
“Nightline,” which began as a nightly program during the 1979-1981 Iranian
hostage crisis. “Nightline,” though, was
a news program, not another talk show.
Toward the end of his reign, “The Arsenio Hall Show” emerged as a real
contender, foreshadowing future late-night programs aimed at younger, urban
viewers

Through
the years, Carson created indelible characters like “Carnac the Magnificent,” was
a fine interviewer, and had the ability to sustain a monologue even when it was
bombing with an audience. It seemed that
his Nebraska upbringing gave him the ability to simultaneously appeal to
viewers in urban areas as well as Middle America. Like Walter Cronkite, the dominant news anchor
of the era, he wielded cultural power far greater than his successors. The PBS special shows David Brinkley saying that
it was a rule of thumb in Washington that once Carson started telling jokes
about a particular politician that his career was over.

By
providing them with a platform, Carson also jump-started the careers of a
virtual who’s who of comedians from the last twenty-five years including Jay
Leno, David Letterman, Jerry Seinfeld, and Ellen DeGeneres. Airing weekday nights at 11:30 p.m. I have
fond childhood memories of staying up late to watch Carson, even though I did
not find him particularly funny. In
fact, I preferred to watch Leno’s monologues once he became the regular guest
host, as he seemed more relevant and hip (yes, there was a time when Leno
seemed hip).

Famously,
a knockdown battle ensured when NBC chose Leno over Letterman as Carson’s
replacement in 1992, likely to Carson’s chagrin. Letterman took his talents to CBS, where the
two have battled for talk show supremacy ever since, with Leno usually winning
the ratings battle, though Letterman has tended to come closer with the younger
demographic.

Like
other television time slots, the late show market has fractured since Carson’s
departure. Rather than a majority of the
audience watching “The Tonight Show,” Republicans and older people prefer Leno
while Democrats and younger people prefer Letterman. Moreover, the emergence of Jon Stewart’s
“Daily Show” and Stephen Colbert’s “Colbert Report” on Comedy Central over the
last decade has given cable a central part in the competition. Though it airs before Leno and Letterman, “The
Daily Show” has come close to surpassing the older comedians in the ratings with
younger viewers. Many observers expect Stewart
to do so this year, as the 2012 election will likely give a boost to the “Daily
Show.”

As I
noted in a previous post, one should not get too nostalgic about the pre-cable
age of television. See http://popculturemeetshistory.blogspot.com/2011/12/death-of-colonel-potter-and-fracturing.html
Carson, like Cronkite, probably had too much influence. The creativity that has ensued with the
arrival of “The Daily Show” and other programs has given us options that are
frequently more entertaining. Still, the
common culture that the U.S. had as late as the 1980s is gone and isn’t likely
to return. There will never be another
Carson.